Our Punching Bag
The delightfully vicious Mark Leibovich turns his aim today on everyone’s favorite punching bag: Scott McClellan. As he begins, “In this era of on-message orthodoxy, the republic has evolved to where the leader of the free world can praise his most visible spokesman for saying nothing.”
“The weary White House frontman is an iconic Washington role, epitomized over the years by Nixon’s Ron Ziegler during Watergate and Clinton’s Mike McCurry during Monica. A ceremonial flak jacket hangs in the closet of McClellan’s West Wing office, following in a tradition of previous tenants, beginning with Ford spokesman Ron Nessen. The press secretary delivers an administration’s daily boilerplate and also serves as a storm wall, or ‘human pinata’ in the words of Ari Fleischer, whom McClellan succeeded on July 15, 2003, the day after Robert Novak outed CIA analyst Valerie Plame in a column.
“‘It may not look like it,’ McClellan, 37, said from the podium after an especially tough week recently. ‘But there’s a little flesh that’s been taken out of me the last few days.’ This is as close as McClellan will flirt in the briefing room with conveying something beyond the preapproved white noise. Indeed, he has been credited — or blamed — for taking the craft of party-line discipline to new heights, or depths.”
Cox’s Ken Herman has perhaps the best line: “As with most people who do regular televised battle with McClellan, Herman says McClellan is a nice guy, polite and friendly off-camera. ‘He seems to have the right temperament to be a punching bag,’ Herman says. ‘Who knows, maybe he goes home at night and kicks his dog?’”
Tip: If you read all the way to the end of the article, you’re rewarded with quotes about Scottie from his mother. Guess how many stitches he read as a child?
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online 
Nadine Cheung
Editor, The Job Post
FishbowlDC Twitter feed loading...
